Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia

Alexei inherited hemophilia from his mother Alexandra, an X chromosome hereditary condition that typically affects males, which she had acquired through the line of her maternal grandmother Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. It was known as the "Royal Disease" because so many descendants of the intermarried European royal families had it (or carried it, in the case of females.) In 2009, genetic analysis determined that Alexei had hemophilia B.

On 30 April 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that DNA testing had proven that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and the Grand Duchess Maria. DNA information, made public in July 2008, that was obtained from the Yekaterinburg site and repeated independent testing by laboratories such as the University of Massachusetts Medical School revealed that the final two missing Romanov remains were indeed authentic and that the entire Romanov family lived in the Ipatiev House. In March 2009, results of the DNA testing were published, confirming that the two bodies discovered in 2007 were those of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria.

As noted, the remains of Alexei and Maria's (or Anastasia’s) bodies were found in 2008. As of 2015, Alexei's remains had not yet been interred with the rest of his family, as the Russian Orthodox Church has requested more DNA testing to ensure that his identity was confirmed.

On 23 August 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of twelve and fifteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time of the assassination, while Maria was nineteen years, one month old. Alexei was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Alexei's elder sisters, Olga and Tatiana, were twenty-two and twenty-one years old, respectively, at the time of the assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes. Also, striped material was found that appeared to have been from a blue-and-white striped cloth; Alexei commonly wore a blue-and-white striped undershirt.

The Romanov family had been canonized as holy martyrs in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which had developed among emigres after the Russian Revolution and the World Wars. After the decline of the Soviet Union, the government of Russia agreed with the Russian Orthodox Church to have the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters (which were found at the execution site) interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were executed. In 2000, Alexei and his family were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Writers from the 1920s had a variety of explanations for the apparent effects of Rasputin. Greg King thinks such explanations fail to take into account those times when Rasputin apparently healed the boy, despite being 2600 km (1650 miles) away. For historian Fuhrmann, these ideas on hypnosis and drugs flourished because the Imperial Family lived in such isolation from the wider world. ("They lived almost as much apart from Russian society as if they were settlers in Canada.") Moynahan says, "There is no evidence that Rasputin ever summoned up spirits, or felt the need to; he won his admirers through force of personality, not by tricks." Shelley said that the secret of Rasputin's power lay in the sense of calm, gentle strength, and shining warmth of conviction. Radzinsky wrote in 2000 that Rasputin believed he truly possessed a supernatural healing ability or that his prayers to God saved the boy.

Alexei Nikolaevich (Russian: Алексе́й Никола́евич) (12 August [O.S. 30 July] 1904 – 17 July 1918) was the last Tsesarevich (heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire). He was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born with haemophilia, which his parents tried treating with the methods of a peasant faith healer named Grigori Rasputin.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Romanovs were sent into internal exile in Tobolsk, Siberia. After the October Revolution, the family was initially to be tried in a court of law, before the intensification of the Russian Civil War made execution increasingly favorable in the eyes of the Soviet government. With White Army soldiers rapidly approaching, the Ural Regional Soviet ordered the murder of Alexei, the rest of his family, and four remaining retainers on 17 July 1918. Rumors persisted for decades that Alexei had escaped his execution, with multiple impostors claiming his identity. Alexei's remains, along with those of his sister Maria (or Anastasia), were ultimately discovered in a secondary grave near the rest of the Romanov family in 2007. On 17 July 1998, the 80th anniversary of their execution, Alexei's parents, three of his sisters, and the four retainers, were formally interred in the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, while Alexei's and Maria's (or Anastasia's) bones remain in Russian state archives. The Romanov family was canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.

The Tsesarevich was murdered on 17 July 1918 aged 13 in the cellar room of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The killings were carried out by forces of the Bolshevik secret police under Yakov Yurovsky. According to one account of the execution, the family was told to get up and get dressed in the middle of the night because they were going to be moved. Nicholas II carried Alexei to the cellar room. His mother asked for chairs to be brought so that she and Alexei could sit down. When the family and their servants were settled, Yurovsky announced that they were to be executed. The firing squad first killed Nicholas, the Tsarina, and the two male servants. Alexei remained sitting in the chair, "terrified," before the assassins turned on him and shot at him repeatedly. The boy remained alive and the killers tried to stab him multiple times with bayonets. "Nothing seemed to work," wrote Yurovsky later. "Though injured, he continued to live." Unbeknownst to the killing squad, the Tsarevich's torso was protected by a shirt wrapped in precious gems that he wore beneath his tunic. Finally Yurovsky fired two shots into the boy's head, and he fell silent.

The imperial family was arrested following the February Revolution of 1917, which resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II. When he was in captivity at Tobolsk, Alexei complained in his diary that he was "bored" and begged God to have "mercy" on him. He was permitted to play occasionally with Kolya, the son of one of his doctors, and with a kitchen boy named Leonid Sednev. As he became older, Alexei seemed to tempt fate and injure himself on purpose. While in Siberia, he rode a sled down the stairs of the prison house and injured himself in the groin. The hemorrhage was very bad, and he was so ill that he could not be moved immediately when the Bolsheviks relocated his parents and older sister Maria to Yekaterinburg in April 1918. However, neither Nicholas II nor Empress Alexandra mention anything about a sledding accident in their diaries, and in fact primary resources such as letters of Empress Alexandra and the diaries of both Nicholas II and Alexandra state that the haemorrhage was caused by a coughing fit. On 30 March (12 April) 1918, Empress Alexandra recorded in her diary: 'Baby stays in bed as fr[om] coughing so hard has a slight haemorrhage in the abdom[en]. Every day from then onwards until her removal to Yekaterinburg, Alexandra recorded Alexei's condition in her diary. Alexei and his four other sisters joined the rest of the family weeks later. He was reliant on a wheelchair for the remaining weeks of his life.

Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. He did this in favour of his twelve-year-old son Alexei, who ascended the throne under a regency. Nicholas later decided to alter his original abdication. Whether that act had any legal validity is open to speculation. Nicholas consulted with doctors and others and realised that he would have to be separated from Alexei if he abdicated in favour of his son. Not wanting Alexei to be parted from the family in this crisis, Nicholas altered the abdication document in favour of his younger brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia. After receiving advice about whether his personal security could be guaranteed, Michael declined to accept the throne without the people's approval through an election held by the proposed Constituent Assembly. No such referendum was ever held.

Alexei's diary, which was presumably kept by his tutors and relates his daily activities for January and February 1917, is written both in French and English and is preserved in the "Grand Duchess Kseniia Aleksandrovna Papers" collection in the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, California, USA).

In December 1916, Major-General Sir John Hanbury-Williams, head of the British military at Stavka, received word of the death of his son in action with the British Expeditionary Force in France. Tsar Nicholas sent twelve-year-old Alexei to sit with the grieving father. "Papa told me to come sit with you as he thought you might feel lonely tonight," Alexei told the general. Alexei, like all the Romanov men, grew up wearing sailor uniforms and playing at war from the time he was a toddler. His father began to prepare him for his future role as Tsar by inviting Alexei to sit in on long meetings with government ministers.

In 1916, he was given the title of Lance Corporal, of which he was very proud. Alexei's favorites were the foreigners of Belgium, Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and Serbia, and in favor, adopted him as their mascot. Hanbury-Williams, whom Alexei liked, wrote: "As time went on and his shyness wore off he treated us like old friends and […] had always some bit fun with us. With me it was to make sure that each button on my coat was properly fastened, a habit which naturally made me take great care to have one or two unbuttoned, in which case he used to at once to stop and tell me that I was 'untidy again,' give a sigh at my lack of attention to these details and stop and carefully button me up again."

During World War I, Alexei joined his father at Stavka, when his father became the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in 1915. Alexei seemed to like military life very much and became very playful and energetic. In one of his father's notes to his mother, he said "[I] have come in from the garden with wet sleeves and boots as Alexei sprayed us at the fountain. It is his favorite game […] peals of laughter ring out. I keep an eye, in order to see that things do not go too far." Alexei even ate the soldiers' black bread, and refused when he was offered a meal that he would eat in his palace, saying "It's not what soldiers eat". In December 1915, Rasputin was invited to see Alexei when the 11-year-old boy was accidentally thrown against the window of a train and his nose began to bleed.

Observers and scholars have offered suggestions for Rasputin's apparent positive effect on Alexei: he used hypnotism, administered herbs to the boy, or his advice to prevent too much action by the doctors aided the boy's healing. Others speculated that, with the information he got from his confidante at the court, lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova, Rasputin timed his "interventions" for times when Alexei was already recovering, and claimed all the credit. Court physician Botkin believed that Rasputin was a charlatan and that his apparent healing powers were based on the use of hypnosis but Rasputin did not become interested in this practice before 1913 and his teacher Gerasim Papandato was expelled from St. Petersburg. Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin's enemies, suggested that he secretly gave Alexei Tibetan herbs which he got from quack doctor Peter Badmayev, but these drugs were rejected by the court. Maria Rasputin believed her father exercised magnetism.

Tsarevich Alexei Island (Russian: Остров Цесаревича Алексея), later renamed Maly Taymyr, was named in honour of Alexei by the 1913 Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition led by Boris Vilkitsky on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service.

In September 1912, Alexei and his family visited their hunting retreat in the Białowieża Forest. On 5 September Alexei jumped into a rowboat and hit his groin on the oarlocks. A large bruise appeared within minutes but in a week reduced in size. In mid-September, the family moved to Spała (then in Russian Poland). On 2 October, Alexei accompanied his mother on a drive in the woods. The "juddering of the carriage had caused still healing hematoma in his upper thigh to rupture and start bleeding again." He had to be carried out of the carriage in an almost unconscious state. His temperature rose, his heartbeat dropped, and he hemorrhaged in his upper thigh and abdomen. For 11 days, he screamed "O Lord have mercy on me!" and begged Alexandra, "Mama, help me!" He asked Alexandra to "build me a little monument of stones in the woods" and asked "When I'm dead, it won't hurt any more, will it?" Alexandra never left his bedside, and she refused to rest or eat. Nicholas "took turns with Alix to sit with Alexei," but he "rushed weeping bitterly to his study" when he saw Alexei scream. On 6 October, Alexei's fever rose to 39 degrees and he hemorrhaged into his stomach. On 8 October, Alexei received the last sacrament. Alexei's tutor, Pierre Gilliard, wrote to his children, "Pray, my children, pray daily and fervently for our precious heir." On 10 October, a medical bulletin announcing Alexei's impending death was published in the newspapers.

In the autumn of 1907, Alexei fell and hurt his leg when he was playing in the Alexander Park. The fall triggered an internal hemorrhage. His paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia reflected that "the poor child lay in such pain, dark patches under his eyes and his little body all distorted, and the leg terribly swollen." The doctors could do nothing. Alexandra telegraphed Princess Anastasia of Montenegro and asked her to find Rasputin. Rasputin prayed over Alexei and told Alexei "Your pain is going away. You will soon be well. You must thank God for healing you. And now, go to sleep." Soon after Rasputin left, the swelling in Alexei's leg went down. Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was amazed by Alexei's swift recovery, and she wrote that the next morning Alexei "was not just alive – but well. He was sitting up in bed, the fever gone, the eyes clear and bright, not a sign of any swelling on his leg."

Alexei's parents indulged his tantrums and mischievous behavior, and they rarely punished him. In 1906, Alexei and his family went on a cruise to Finland. In the middle of the night, the 2-year-old Alexei commanded the ship's band to wake up and play for him. Instead of punishing Alexei, Nicholas joked "that's the way to bring up an autocrat!" Nicholas called Alexei "Alexei the Terrible."

Alexei was born on 12 August [O.S. 30 July] 1904 in Peterhof Palace, St. Petersburg Governorate, Russian Empire. He was the youngest of five children of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. His father was the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Princess Dagmar of Denmark, and his mother was the sixth child of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. His paternal great-grandparents were Alexander II of Russia, Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and Louise of Hesse-Kassel, while his maternal great-grandparents were Queen Victoria and her husband Albert, Prince Consort. His older sisters were the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

Alexei was christened on 3 September 1904 in the chapel in Peterhof Palace. His principal godparents were his paternal grandmother and his great-uncle, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. His other godparents included his oldest sister, Olga; his great-grandfather King Christian IX of Denmark; King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, the Prince of Wales and Wilhelm II, German Emperor. As Russia was at war with Japan, all active soldiers and officers of the Russian Army and Navy were named honorary godfathers.

Gilliard, the French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse and Diarmuid Jeffreys, a journalist, speculated that Rasputin may have halted the administration of aspirin. This pain-relieving analgesic had been available since 1899 but would have worsened Alexei's condition. Because aspirin is an antiaggregant and has blood-thinning properties; it prevents clotting, and promotes bleeding which could have caused the hemarthrosis. The "anti-inflammatory drug" would have worsened Alexei's joints' swelling and pain. According to historian M. Nelipa, Robert K. Massie was correct to suggest that psychological factors play a part in the course of the disease.